Study of centenarians

For this study, a unique database has been compiled containing all known and verified centenarians in the Netherlands over the past century. The database contains data on 7,074 men and 29,144 women who were born between 1812 and 1923 and who died in the Netherlands between 1912 and 2023 or were still alive on 1 January 2024.

The data is sourced from various historical sources, including death certificates, population registers, the National Register of Deceased Persons and a database from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). In addition, the data has been supplemented with obituaries in newspapers, memorial cards and digital cemetery registers.

The ages of centenarians have been carefully verified by comparing them with birth certificates and other sources such as marriage certificates and population registers. For the period from 1995 onwards, the data has been supplemented with anonymised CBS data from the Personal Records Database (BRP).

As people who emigrated are no longer included in the Dutch population register, the dataset does not include Dutch nationals who reached the age of 100 or older while living abroad.

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